A Short Loop Around the Bolaven Plateau

If there’s any one place that can reflect the experience of the Lao people and their land, it’s the Bolaven Plateau — a beautiful place marked by a tragic past and facing a challenging future. The Bolaven Plateau is an elevated region in Southern Laos named after the Laven ethnic group that historically dominated the land. During the French occupation it was deemed fitting land for growing coffee, a crop they still grow today.  In 1901, the ethnic groups that populate the Plateau heavily revolted against the French occupation. But it was the Vietnam War that earned the region most of its scars. As one of the areas passed through by the Ho Chi Minh Trail, it was considered strategically vital to both the Americans and North Vietnamese and was consequently one of the most bombed regions in the war.  A staggering number of UXO still remain.  And while the sweet pungent smell of coffee plants and the sight of smiling children speaks of more peaceful days today, the tree-stumps that litter the region expose the treachery of logging and continuing development by the Chinese.

We traveled to the plateau by motorbike, which is now becoming our favorite way to tour Southeast Asia. It was a slow 85km drive thanks to a confusing map and a treacherous rain storm waited out under a tree.  Perpetual wetness seems a condition of travel in Southeast Asia this time of year.  By late afternoon, we stopped at small village at the junction to check our map only to be bombarded by five young boys.  “Hello ambushes,” some expats call it. The boys persistently pointed past the huts to a gushing waterfall in the distance, so massive in scale we were immediately drawn. We followed the boys through the village on the path to the waterfall; a short but slippery and muddy scramble.  It would have been impossible to manage had it not been for the boys offering up roots as grips and bamboo as walking sticks. At times, little hands pressed my tush for momentum on particularly challenging ascents. While we struggled in our hiking boots, they scampered up the hill with ease in flip flops.  At the end of the path was a clearing, just feet from a spectacular waterfall with a rainbow that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

Exhausted, wet and muddy, we continued on our motorbike to Tad Lo, where we found accommodation for the night.   At sunset, we watched the villagers migrate to the river to bathe wrapped in sarongs and carrying plastic caddies filled with shampoo soap and toothbrushes; a strange reminder of my college dorm days. We stayed that evening with a young family that had just recently opened a guesthouse of simple thatch roofed bungalows overlooking a rice paddy.  We all made dinner together and I finally discovered the secret to making spring rolls with rice paper that don’t stick: cloth towels!

The following day, we woke early to the sound of roosters. After a cup of delicious strong Lao coffee made from Bolaven beans, we set off on a hike to a nearby village.  Here they speak a unique Astralasian dialect and like many tribes in Southeast Asia, are animist, which means they believe everything has a spirit, including the trees. They are obsessed with death so they carve coffins for themselves and their families, which they keep under rice sheds for when the time comes. Unfortunately it comes sooner to them than most, as the life expectancy is 40 and the infant mortality rate is 100 in 1000. Most die of malaria.

We brought along a stack of books we purchased in Luang Prabang from a non-profit called Big Brother Mouse, which writes, illustrates and publishes children’s books in Lao.  They depend on travelers to purchase and disperse the books to rural villages where literacy is low and books are in short supply. Eager to share the books, I opened one up to show a villager and his young son.  The little boy’s eyes lit up and his father kept smiling and telling me the books were “good quality”.  But the scenario quickly devolved when a hoard of village children began grabbing the books from my hands.  This is exactly what we were trying to avoid.  The books were meant to be shared amongst the whole village, not go only to the greediest few. We felt defeated.  But when walking around the village, we spotted a group of boys huddled in the spirit house leafing through one of the books, while a younger child gripped another as if it were gold.  It gave us some hope that the books would do a bit of good after all.

Walking through the village was like traveling back in time. People were living like they lived hundreds of years ago.  No electricity, no running water. Food is caught in the river and prepared over wood fires. The villagers’ primary crops are tobacco and chilies, which they chop and dry in the sun.  Despite a very basic life, smiles abound, particularly among the children who ran up to us eagerly saying, “hello, what is your name?”, the first words they learn in English.

After our hike, we jumped on our motorbike and continued our loop around the Plateau, stopping at an even more extraordinary waterfall and making it back into Pakse before dark. We were wet, muddy and tired yet dazzled.